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Golf Phenom Manassero Lost in Tiger Hype

Today’s Fix is going to be as Tiger-free as possible, not because Tiger Woods will flood every other inch of your sports pages today, but, rather, out of respect to the person most likely to be angrier with him than anyone else.

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Matteo Manassero does not look like he’s shaved this month.

It’s not Gloria Allred. The famed attorney, representing Tiger Woods transgression Joslyn James, finishes third in our imaginary rankings. Billy Payne, the Augusta chairman who let off a scathing rebuke of Woods and his indiscretions on Wednesday, finishes a close second.

There is one person who probably is steaming at Tiger more than these two combined: Francesca Manassero, mother of 16-year-old Italian golf phenom Matteo Manassero.

Granted, this is just guesswork on my part. Manassero’s mom hasn’t said anything to the press. But what doting Italian mother of a 16-year-old boy wouldn’t be stewing over a man of questionable moral judgment stealing the spotlight from her son, the youngest golfer ever to compete in the Masters?

If this situation were transported to any other year, Manassero would be the focus of most of the golf world’s attention this morning as he tees off. Unlike Michelle Wie, who became more of a sideshow with her failed attempts on the men’s tour, Manassero has a solid resume behind him. He was the youngest winner of Britain’s Amateur Championship in its 124-year existence, a feat that qualified him for this try at Augusta. In between, he tied for 12th at the British Open. He’s also charmingly respectful. In his news conference, he blew off a translator in order to speak to the media in English.

Manassero gained even more points with the pros when he asked Tom Watson to play a practice round with him at Augusta ahead of the tournament.

The young Italian is not the only gifted teen participating in this year’s Masters. Sports Illustrated’s Farrell Evans profiles Byeong-Hun “Ben” An, an 18-year-old who, in 2009, was the youngest player to win the U.S. Amateur in its 109-year history and whose parents were Olympic table-tennis players.

Two other teenagers, Ryo Ishikawa and Han Chang-won, will be teeing up at Augusta, as well. “For four teenagers to have qualified for the Masters is unheard of,” John Hopkins writes in the Times of London. Meanwhile, only one golfer participating in this year’s Masters is over 60. The Associated Press’s Paul Newberry suggests that the older golfers have been “done in by a supersized course that’s just no fun to play.”

One professional golfer still young enough to handle the course is John Daly. Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t invited to play. This snub wasn’t enough to stop him from surfacing in Augusta. Doing his best Pete Rose impersonation, Daly set up shop across from Augusta National in a 45-foot RV, Rhonda Cook writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Daly’s been selling his personalized merchandise, signing autographs and posing for pictures all week.

Outside of the eventual embarrassment, one other element Daly will have to deal with is regularly wiping “the green” off the top of his RV and his wares. The Albany Times-Union’s Pete Dougherty gives a unique perspective on one of Augusta’s peskier and unnoticed problems during this tournament: pollen. “A light shade of green dust,” writes Dougherty, “has settled on anything not moving.”

Be sure to check back here all day for an updated Masters leaderboard and full coverage of the first round played by a certain guy with a feline nickname.

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The baseball season is just three days old. David Ortiz would like to remind you of that. And he would like to do so in a way that would make Quentin Tarantino beam with pride. The Red Sox slugger went on a profanity-laced tirade after Tuesday’s game against the Yankees, following questions from the press corps about his slow start.

“You guys just wait until [expletive] happens and then you guys talk [expletive],” he said. “Two [expletive] games already and you mother [expletives] are going crazy. There’s 160 games left.”

NESN.com’s Tony Lee writes that Big Papi always has responded well to being questioned by the media during rough stretches, both with his locker-room answers and his on-field performance. Lee’s theory held true Wednesday, when Ortiz drove in Boston’s only run.

Lisa Swan of the Faster Times sets aside her Yankees fandom for a moment and admits that she is cheering for Ortiz because of his valid gripes about the media. “Given how cooperative and friendly he has been with the press for his career,” opines Swan, “Ortiz should have earned more than one game of goodwill before the media started writing his obituary.”

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Trivia time! The phrase “Absolutely, Big Papi” was said by _______ about _______.

A. A.J. Burnett; the Red Sox batter he would least like to face.
B. Hank Steinbrenner; the Red Sox player he respects the most.
C. Rapper Dr. Dre; the player he would most like to see using his Jay-Z collaboration “Under Pressure” as his plate introduction song.
D. Matteo Manassero; his favorite Smurf.

The answer? C (Note: Nando Di Fino is allowed by law to make the occasional Italian accent joke).

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If player-media feuds aren’t your cup of tea, then maybe media-media feuds are. Yahoo’s Jeff Passan penned a wonderful piece Wednesday on Carl Crawford’s imminent parting of ways with the Tampa Bay Rays. Jonah Keri, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal as both a writer and Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show live-blogger, fired back in the only way a polite Canadian knows how — by writing a 3,994-word retort on his personal Web site. And Passan continued the gentlemanly roundelay with a retort to Keri’s retort on Keri’s site.

Who’s right? We may not know for another six years. Who wins? Any baseball fan with 30 minutes to sink into reading both pieces.

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Scrabble lovers outraged over rules changes to the board game can rest easy. Former Journal sportswriter Stefan Fatsis, author of the book “Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble,” says that this panic was caused by “a combination of deceptive corporate shilling and media incompetence.” Mattel simply decided to release yet another spinoff of the game overseas and did nothing to dispel rumors that the game was changing its rules.

“No, world, the rules of Scrabble are not changing,” Fatsis reassures us. Instead, he bemoans the release of another sure-to-flop offshoot of the beloved game.

SPORTS, THE JOURNAL WAY

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